Reviews for Caribbean Culture and British Fiction in the Atlantic World, 1780-1870

The average rating for Caribbean Culture and British Fiction in the Atlantic World, 1780-1870 based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-03-28 00:00:00 Brandon Montgomery The Caribbean colonies, especially Jamaica, were of central importance to the British E/empire; they were not relegated to the side and ignored. Incidents such as the Morant Bay rebellion (1865) in Jamaica - or more specifically, what to do about the harsh quashing of that rebellion, led by Governor Eyre - were hot potatoes in Victorian Britain. And Tim Watson does a great job of showing just how important Jamaica and the other colonies were in the West Indies: he ploughs through historical documents with aplomb, and engages with literary analyses with skill, as can be seen in his keen awareness of how Jamaica (etc.) - and the controversies that issues to do with Jamaica bring up - finds its way into the plot of, say, George Eliot's Felix Holt. As well as acknowledging the importance of Darwin's On the Origin of Species, and the crazy ideas of (as George Stocking puts it) 'hereditarian racialism' that came about thereafter, Watson also brilliantly shows how ideas of citizenship, enfranchisement and Empire come about in response to perceptions of Jamaica at the time. It's really bloody interesting to flip the perspective; essentially it's not too different to Peter Frankopan's The Silk Roads insofar as it gets us to look at what we think we know through another vantage point. Well done, Watson. One of Watson's missions seems to be to get us to appreciate more finely one certain Samuel Ringgold Ward - a black, American-born spokesman for black rights but also (paradoxically (at least seen this way until Watson elucidates upon Ward's apparent contradictions)) an advocate for British control and rule in Jamaica. As I read about Ward, I simply got the sense that he was a real person, not some mythic figure, and Watson does well to paint him thus. He's someone who, for example, quite clearly took someone's money and didn't give it back, but he evidently cared deeply about black people's progress in Jamaica and elsewhere. He clearly had his own internal conflicts and changes of ideas, but he still remained essentially consistent. How hard must it have been for him and others like him, such as Frederick Douglas! The first section of the book looks at Simon Taylor, a wealthy and established planter in Jamaica. This first chapter does well to show how those in control of slaves used records and data to hide or disguise the cruelty of slavery. This leads in nicely to show how this mode was reworked later for opposite purposes. Having myself written about Cynric R. Williams's Hamel: the Obeah Man, it was a joy to read Watson's analysis of this novel. His overall argument surrounding this text - that, as abolitionists hijacked the plantocratic realist forms for their own means, the planter classes turned to romance - is hard to argue against. The romantic ideas of Jamaica made Victorians nostalgic and wax lyrical about the 'good old times', when slaves were a simple-minded flock, carefully looked after by their masters. Of course, this is all nonsense but it's interesting to be aware of this faux-representation attempted by pro-slavery adherents. Overall, Watson nails it in this finely written book. He remains objective and thorough throughout. If you're not interested in Jamaica in the 1800s, you might find this book a tad slow, but if you are interested, get it read!

Review # 2 was written on 2012-11-28 00:00:00 Daniel Jacques This book serves as a good seminar in general English studies. The author keeps a light tone throughout, but also incorporates examples that add insight to the topics he discusses. I recommend it for any who want a brief overview of directions they could go in studying the subject.